Staying with media, moving towards the finance

I have spent all my adult life studying journalism, media and communication. This was the field of biggest fascination for me. How and to what extent do media influence people and, hence, social structures? – This was the question I was trying to answer.

When you take the look at the Articles section of this home page, you will notice that I am very interested in politics. Being Georgian, I feel myself mostly attached to the political developments around my country. So, you would assume, political communication should be main focus of my research. This assumption would be wrong. In ten years of my academic career, I was gradually moving from political communication to media and finance. Today, I try to answer the question how media are influenced by the finance and how financial world is influenced by the media.

I must admit, I am man who loves measurements. My early attempts to measure the influence media exercise over politics were met with great resistance from my tutors. I can understand, rarely tried someone to look at Bill Clinton’s speech and conclude the effect of this speech over the general audience will make 24.05 points. And nobody dared to make such bold statement in third semester of the academic education.

I admit, I played the trick and went on the path of least resistance: by switching politics with finance, I took over the subject where measurements and numbers is everyday business. Anyway, I think politics and finance are inseparable.

Mediatisation

Scientists, mostly German scholars, call the process of increasing media influence over society the mediatisation. This term is not broadly used in English studies. You can search Wikipedia for the word and can easily find out what I mean. However, I like this term and love to say that I actually study the mediatisation. I define mediatisation as the process of change or the state in which institutions, and even entire societies, are defined anew by the media, and in which the outcomes of debate over all major political, social, economic or other important issues increasingly depend on media reporting. Therefore, mediatisation could also be understood as the shift of power from governmental institutions to the media.

Framing

The next very good question to answer is: how can we observe the effects of mediatisation in the society? To make this question even more precise: how can we measure the influence of media on the financial markets? There are many ways to do this and your choice may depend on the scientific field you are working into. An economist would attempt to utilize theories which differ from theories utilised by the sociologist. As I work in the mass communication research filed, I mostly look at texts, speeches, videos and try to measure their power by observing the reaction of the financial world on news or announcements.

In addition we can find many ways to understand the effects of messages on financial markets. I prefer to use theory called framing. I believe that media frame messages in certain way and the way messages are formulated affects market behaviour.

I understand framing as the process of particular interpretation of perceived reality. Frames are perspectives though which facts are seen. Therefore, framing in media is an attempt to make certain aspects in the text or broadcasting more salient than others and to present them in positive negative or neutral light by providing problem definitions, interpretations, and moral, political, economic, social or personal treatment recommendations.

Content Analysis

For me, frames create certain recognizable patterns. I think that if messages are formulated with using these framing patterns there is a good probability we can guess what will be the reaction of markets on them. So, I believe that if we use the framing patter we can find certain non-random behaviour in highly random financial markets.

In order to find these patters I utilize the method called content analysis. I think the name content analysis speaks for itself. I look at content of media messages independently of their format and attempt to find the framing patterns within it.